Carolyn MILF
by Upeasterner
Summary: Candy hopes the Captain doesn't catch Jonathan repeating the local scuttlebut.


Who knows why he did it.

Marijuana made Jonathan stupid, but not insane. Sleepy, not agitated. Maybe because that day he'd been smoking with several of his friends on the beach, and the October air was crisp, my bro arrived back at the house wide-eyed and smirky. Sixteen-year-old Jonathan was broad-shouldered, small-waisted and taller even than Captain Gregg. But his brain had not kept up with his body. When he loped through the gate, grinning lopsidedly, I smelled weed and more than a whiff of trouble.

"Candy," he began as he stumbled, then caught himself on the stairs where I sat double- checking my Calculus homework. "You're not going to believe it." Considering we'd grown up with a ghost for a "father," it was hard to imagine what I wouldn't believe.

"Like, wow, dude, Claymore caught you toking?" I answered caustically, moving away as he grabbed my shoulder and heaved himself heavily down beside me. Jonathan really reeked. "You'd better climb up the tree if you want to get into the house. You stink. If Mom or the Captain see or smell you, you'll be grounded for life."

"I'll tell them it's Lauren's perfume," he laughed, a stupid grain betraying his diminished capacity. "Patchouli. Captain Gregg doesn't know what pot smells like and mom, well, she's such a goody goody I'm sure she never smoked in the seventies. Wow, you're not going to believe it. Like, I couldn't believe they believe it."

Jonathan was obviously having problems keeping thoughts straight in his drug-addled head but whatever he had to spill must be good because he remained on point, urgent and insistent albeit loopy.

"Yeah?" I tried not to appear too interested as I pondered equations with two variables. This had to be about a girl, because not much else interested Jonathan and the apes he hung out with. It wasn't Red Sox season and none of them had cars yet. That left sex – and Lauren's perfume.

"So you told them you bagged your woman and they believed you?"

"No," he laughed animatedly. "Not me. I mean everybody knows Lauren took a chastity vow. They're talking about Mom. They told me all the moms in Schooner Bay think she's been, you know, with the Captain since we were little. And Andy and Taylor believe it. They said mom's a MILF -- you know what that is? -- and we're lucky because she's not a hag like most of their moms."

My pencil hit the porch with a thud, followed in short order by my graphing calculator. "That's disgusting," I began incredulously. "You let them ramble on about your own mother's sex life? Your friends were talking about Mom – and a ghost nobody will admit they believe in? I don't even want to think about it. Who started this conversation anyway? I hope you were sober enough to at least shut them down --"

"Jordan. He said his mom and the other band moms were gossiping about them on the bus all the way to state championships in Portland. And Mrs. Tondelli was saying how things have been calm at Gull Cottage for years now, so the Captain must be pretty pleased with the way things are going. They were laughing, all the chaperones."

"Jonathan, let's go to Starbucks. Now," I commanded. "Now. You and your big mouth need to get out of here until the evil weed wears off. I'll drive us to Keystone. If Mom or the Captain overhear this conversation who knows what they'll think. And you're too stoned to be trusted."

"Man, I am hungry," he laughed a little too boisterously, pupils widely dilated. "Will you buy me some cake donuts? I'm starved." I grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet and ran inside to get my purse. I knew Mom was upstairs, working on the computer and her windows were closed to fall temperatures. There was no way she could have overheard Jonathan, and the Captain swore he never snooped. However, I knew his hallowed word did not extend to out-of-control teenagers, and it was pretty obvious he was skeptical about Jonathan's latest round of friends. Still, both he and Mom were convinced the only reasonable grown ups who knew the truth about their incredible intimacy were Martha, Ed Peevey and Claymore. I knew taciturn Martha wasn't talking, and Ed's mouth was sealed since his marriage to our housekeeper years ago. Claymore was too afraid of retribution from the Captain, whose bluster had grown even fiercer since his "quisling nephew" came out of the closet five years ago.

But Mom, I knew, was her own worst enemy on daily forays into town and to the Keystone Sam's Club. Always pleasant, she nonetheless projected a smiling equilibrium and self-possession that broached no others. She was friendly and well-liked, but always with a hint of reserve. Some people considered her a little strange, as she was known to mumble under her breath and smile coquettishly out of the blue. She and the Captain were seldom apart and she sometimes, well, just forgot he wasn't real to anyone outside of Gull Cottage.

Mom loved Jonathan and me fiercely, but even we were excluded from the Mom 'n Captain club. I knew she came across to the people in our community as bemused observer who kept her own counsel even after penning a national bestseller about a widow who moves into a house haunted by a dead sea captain.

Neither she nor the Captain thought any of the locals would believe such a well-spun yarn about a love that transcended time and space. I sighed, as I dug my purse out from under the mess of clothes strewn across my bedroom floor. Maybe they'd been naive. Their book, "The Captain Chronicles" did seem to confirm every bit of aged tawdry local gossip. Since we moved to Maine nine years ago, the so-called temper squalls had abated at our cliff side home and, for a while, so did the idle speculation about why such a beautiful woman would lock herself up in a house with century-old furniture and a lifetime supply of spider webs . Gull Cottage had fallen off the gossip map.

I didn't realize Mom's book had put us back on everyone's radar screen. Nationwide, the book was such a hit there already was talk about a weekly sitcom or movie deal. There'd even been an offer for a reality TV show until the producers realized Mom was too middle-aged to appeal to my demographic. Mom had just laughed and joked about not needing any exorcisms anyway.

Mom and the Captain were glad about the book's success because there was enough moolah to go around now. I'd been moved to expensive private school for academic over-achievers and Mom bought Gull Cottage from Claymore. Jonathan was happy because Captain Gregg was so enormously pleased with himself. Supporting Mom, after all, was his ultimate dream.

After listening to Jonathan's THC-flavored ramblings, however, I now realized Mom and Captain's book must have fanned dying embers of Schooner Bay's ghostly rumors, turning their "cabin" back into a conflagration of roaring gossip. It didn't help that Mom was so beautiful even now, well into her mid-forties, and the internet was chock full of supposedly personal information about the woman who'd dreamed up such a spectral hunk.

Still, the local biddies had gossiped about her all the way to Portland? Like Mom, I didn't care what people thought. But like most kids do, I blamed myself for what happened between her and my real father and I'm just overly protective of her I guess. The Captain says that's not my job, but I still remember the drunken violence in our Philadelphia home. Like the Captain, I knew my mom was a shattered woman when we first arrived in Maine in 1999. Aloof out of uncertainty and fear, not well-regarded conceit for her sparkling looks and wry humor. Mom was sort of damned by her looks because everyone thinks beautiful women are conceited. That, I can attest, she isn't.

Mom was so browbeaten when we got here the Captain didn't even tell her he could materialize corporeally until we'd been at Gull Cottage over a year. By then, they were so besotted with each other that I'm sure my mother just one day melted into his arms, where she found a protective cocoon of unconditional love and acceptance. She still tears up about the Captain sometimes, just out of the blue like when we're in Philadelphia. Jonathan and I never needed to be told that mom and the Captain slept together. That's what parents do even if it's lame. They've been openly affectionate in front of us for years, kissing and holding hands and hugging. But a MILF? I prayed the Captain never got wind of this. I knew the Captain's 19th-century code of honor would not stand for this one. Or Jonathan's big mouth.

I hustled back down the stairs trying to decide whether a vanilla latte or a triple-shot espresso would be better to help me shut Jonathan down. My hand was on the front door knob when I froze. I could hear Jonathan talking animatedly and a little too loudly --

"Yeah, Captain Gregg," I heard him say helpfully. "A MILF. You know, a mom I'd like to –"

Captain Gregg had never lifted a finger to anyone in our house. Not ever. But there was a sudden, resounding silence after a slight scuffle. I knew without seeing the Captain had grabbed Jonathan by the collar and hoisted him into the air.

"Daniel?" Mom was directly behind me, on the stairs. Somehow she and the Captain seemed intimately attuned to one another's emotions. "Daniel. What's going on?"

I won't repeat what Jonathan said next, but it sounded more like a protracted sigh than a word, and it began with the letter 'f.' I think Jonathan meant "f--" in the colloquial sense, as in "now I'm screwed." He knew he was done for. Jonathan could charm his way around Mom, but not Captain Gregg. The door blew open and there they stood, Jonathan with his feet an inch off the ground and the Captain, his left hand firmly grasping my ashen brother by the neck. "Come on Captain," Jonathan pleaded uselessly. "I was just repeating what they said."

"What who said?" Mom looked plenty concerned now, and descended further with a very worried look on her face. She'd never heard the Captain speak roughly to Jonathan, let alone grab the little creep in anger.

"Candy," the Captain commanded. "To quarters. Madam, I will deal with the lad and meet you in our cabin in 15 minutes. Hush -- this is a matter best settled between man and boy." The Captain rarely called Mom anything other than dear these days, so we both knew Jonathan was in for it. "Daniel," Mom began again.

"Trust me, my dear," he murmured soothingly but with a hard glint in his eye which suggested Jonathan was about to be keel-hauled. "I'll sort out the lad and will join you shortly."

I ran upstairs, but not to my room. Instead, I headed for the new bathroom they'd installed upstairs, adjacent to Mom's room. Like the Captain, I was not above snooping when all else failed. I settled into the space between the toilet and Mom's bedroom wall and waited. This would be good. A minute later, the door opened softly and there was Mom.

"I guess if the men get to slink off without answering questions then maybe the other woman here can help me out," Mom began a little angrily. "What the hell is going on and why do you suddenly think it's ok to eavesdrop on me and the Captain and, by the way, how many other times have you curled up in here for your own amusement?"

"Uh, never..." I began lamely. Mom just stood there and stared.

"It's a good thing you didn't have to prove up maturity on your Harvard entrance exam," Mom said. I could tell she was peeved because she kept running her hands through her hair and twisting the loose tendrils like a little kid. "Candace Michele, I'd much rather hear about Jonathan's nonsense from you than the Captain. Let's just say I find your take on modernity a little less anachronistic than his."

I marched meekly out of the bathroom and into the blasted cabin and Mom settled at her desk, like she was the CEO of some big company or something, and stared at me.

"Ummm, uh, Jonathan got high with his friends on the beach and his friends started laughing and told him everyone thinks you and the Captain and you know and the other moms say all of the men in Schooner Bay think you're a MILF." I hoped this was helpful, without revealing too much. If nothing else, I thought narcing on Jonathan for pot smoking might deflect mom's curiosity away from the sex part and back onto drug use.

Mom just sat there and stared. She fiddled with her laptop's mouse then closed the lid on her computer. "In other words, the locals think I'm having a prolonged sexual relationship with a ghost and continue to attract attention of the wrong kind because I'm --?"

She has the most beautiful smile, my mother. A grin that goes ear to ear. My particular curse is to be the average-looking child of a stupefyingly beautiful mother. It was easy to see why Jonathan's friends thought she was a MILF. She should have been an actress. I just stood there, watching her as dopily as Jonathan but without benefit of an ameliorating chemical product. There was no way I could answer that one without getting in even more trouble.

Suddenly, Mom snorted and stunned, I realized she was trying not to laugh. She covered her mouth with her hand, and shook her head from side to side. She was laughing so hard there were a few random tears spreading from the outside corners of her eyes downwards upon her cheeks.

"Oh, Candy," she chuckled. "You're 18 now. I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be a prude. This one's priceless. A MILF?! I am so flattered."

My jaw dropped. I thought for sure I'd busted Jonathan for life. Mom wasn't even upset to learn her beloved son was a pothead.

"Candy, I'm sorry,"Mom offered, her laughter subsiding at least a little. "I guess you wouldn't see the humor in all this. Certainly Daniel won't. I must say, however, that I'm a little more concerned about your easy acceptance of eavesdropping than by Jonathan's sporadic drug use."

This wasn't going down the way I'd imagined it would. I felt my face flush. "That's not fair," I began, then stopped. She wasn't mad about the MILF stuff?

Mom can always read my face. Honesty is my curse. That and naivete, I guess. Being book smart has its definite disadvantages.

"I'm sorry, Candy, but the thought of Jonathan and his fellow Neanderthals squatting on the beach, smoking cheap pot and repeating everything they overhear their tasteless parents say doesn't alarm me half as much as the thought that one of the dearest, smartest, prettiest, most well-loved children in the known universe would eavesdrop on a conversation she can only hear half of, well, it belies (as the Captain would say) logic."

My face fell, I could feel it. "Mom, I guess, I wanted to know everything that was going on so I could protect you because if Jonathan and Jordan are talking about this I'm probably going to --"

"Candy, sweetness," she said softly. "Your job now is to go to college and become incredibly happy and successful at whatever you do. Mine is to deal or, not deal, as the case may be with the harridans of this community. As much as I love it, I freely admit Schooner Bay is still a backwater and there's not a lot to do besides pick on the one local writer who made good."

She stopped, and we both could hear the Captain and Jonathan roaring at each other down the hall.

"I suggest," my mother said with a grin, "that you pick your purse back up so WE can head to Starbucks until this storm has cleared. I'll leave Jonathan to Daniel. That's his punishment for being so stupid as to smoke pot with that group of louts and think he could get away with it. Daniel will be stuck with Jonathan as his recompense for losing his bombastic temper yet one more time. As for you, my dear, I think you owe me a triple-shot skinny Vanilla latte!"

My mother the caffeine freak. I didn't bother with my age-old refrain that caffeine was a drug, too, just like marijuana and Madeira. If we were lucky, Claymore's boyfriend, the new Starbucks manager, would be manning the espresso machine AND have all the local gossip to share.

"It's my drug of choice," Mom added with a wicked gleam in her eye.

"Aye aye," I joked back. There was really only one captain in this house.


End file.
